DOWNLOAD Differs from DELETE

Download? Delete? Different?

Who knew?

Well, I guess I do now, sort of.

Almost as intense as the near-horror I felt upon discovering my many, treasured e-mails had "vaporized" was my abject relief upon spying them again...albeit in an entirely different File.

I admit it is a bit distressing to realize how distressed I was becominig about this Really Rather Minor in the Whole Scheme of Things cyber-snafu.

Happily, I was contacted today by Ms. Customer Support Brainiac from Comcast whom, I strongly suspect, skims along life at a considerably higher intetellectual altitude than I can imagine. It is good to have these 'hyper-minds' on Our Side!!

Within less than 10 minutes, she led me through a series of buttons and screens...a veritable guided tour of discovery!...and patiently explained, 2 or 3 times!, that my e-mails had not been literally deleted, but that "The Program" [think: wizard behind The Curtain] had been downloading them into a different file, in my case, the Microsoft Outlook e-mail file. Ah-hah.

And, so, why did It think it had the freedom to do that, I queried.

Ms.Brainiac: "Well, ma'am [this proves I'm old] have you ever tried to share an e-mail or something that you found online and send or copy it to another person?"

Hmmmm, well, yes, yes, I believe I may have...delving back mentally to the last time I recall e-mailing a cnn.com news story to someone who probably didn't care to receive it....

"You see, when you do that, ma'am, it opens up a program that essentially downloads your e-mail....it actually takes it off, or downloads it from our Comcast server directly on to your computer. So, those e-mails are not really GONE, but in a different place, so you can't find them where you used to be able to."

Ah-so. Yes, this is starting to sound like a similar pattern to oh-so-many things in my life of late...what my husband's work phone is, why I walked into a room a few minutes ago, where I put my glasses, the place I stashed my last nugget of Secret Chocolate....yes, it's all starting to Resonate.....

Ms. Brain then guided me through Outlook E-mail Account Settings and had me click a check box --"but ONLY the first box, ma'am"-- which was meant to halt this cyber-stealth in its tracks.

I hesitate to mention that after I hung up the phone with her and again entered my SmartZone Comcast inbox, it was...empty. But, it was. However, I smartly reverted over to Outlook, and there all the little darlings were...practically winking at me!!!

All of which causes me to wonder whether it might not be best to just try and bypass the entirely misnamed "Smart"Zone program on general principle. But....once it sensed my own particular electromagnetic "aura"--or whatever it is that it doesn't seem to like about me!--this "fix" would no doubt be overridden also. Sigh.

However, I am still better off than I was last night, and I profusely thanked Ms. Brain for her able assistance.

And, I'm not even going to quibble about the mind-bending logic of how I must reinstate my phantom e-mails back into my proper SmartZone Inbox:

"To do that, ma'am, I'm afraid you'll have to click on those e-mails and Forward those Back to yourself. That's something we can't do from our end."

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